Naptha availability

[Elden DuRand]

I'm gonna have to go to the gas station this morning and get some pump gas because I can't find camp fuel any more.

As I've heard, Wal Mart has quit carrying it because it's supposedly used to make methamphetamine.

I have been researching buying it in bulk. Used to be you could get it as an industrial solvent called VM&P Naptha, also known as Kensol 10 in 55 gallon drums.

One outfit will sell it to me in 55 gal drums. Two drum minimum at $6.00 per gallon with a $30 surcharge!

Another outfit has a good price on Kensol 10, about $3.20 per gallon including freight. The only kicker is that I have to buy a truck load or 7,000 gallons minimum!

Does anyone out there have any ideas? Someone (not me!) could purchase in 7,000 gallon lots and repackage it in (1400!!) 5-gallon cans or fill customers' cans at shows. They could price it competitive with pump gas and make a reasonable profit at the same time.

I'd personally buy two or three cans at a time.

I can't imagine anyone would use it as a road fuel because in any cars and trucks made after about 1930, it would ping like crazy and burn valves.

Take care - Elden
http://www.oldengine.org/members/durand/

[spfx_dude]

Eldon:

I work with a lot of chemicals in bulk. Is it possible that you could find a supplier that will sell you actual naptha on a drum level, if you fill out the proper paper work?

I know that in LA you can not get iso alcohol without permits, and here there are a lot of other chemicals that I have to fill out forms for so that the watchfull eye knows.

Just a thought.

I would definitely make sure that the chemical you are ordering is in fact a naptha solvent that has no additives or other "nasties" that could give you problems down the road.

Cheers!

[Dave L]

Elden
See if there is a cenex co-op in your area some in this area of washington state carry white gas in bulk.
Dave

[Daniel Dorece]

Since " Coleman " stove fuel is for the " outdoor " type I would try all the Sporting goods stores in your area. I still get mine at the local Farm & Fleet store. It has gotten rather pricy at over $5.00 a gallon but for some of my engines nothing works better. I am wondering if it wouldn't be possible to cut regular pump gas with diesel and come up with something close.
Iron Wolf

[Matt Montague]

Good Morning,

I have to say that I tried using the walmart camp fuel in one of my engines and found it to load up and run very slugish, it seemed that no amount of fliddling or tuning helped. These engines run very good on pump gas, can you please explain why you like camp fuel better.

Thanks

Matt

[Daniel Dorece]

Hi Matt;

I have two reasons for using it. First ,it is about as close to the 55 or so octane gasoline that was available back when these engines were built and second, it burns slower and reduces the shock load on the crank and engine frame. Remember that cast iron is rather fragile and the old plain carbon steel cranks don't handle torsion loads as well as the new alloys. And if an old engine won't run well on it now it probably didn't run too good on regular gas back then.
Iron Wolf

[Mike Monnier]

I noticed around September that all of my local Wal-Marts quit carrying the Ozark Trail brand fuel. They still carry the Coleman brand though. My local Gander Mountain store has it as well.
I hadn't heard the meth connection, but it wouldn't suprise me. They need to do something about the crackheads cooking the stuff instead of making it difficult for the 95% of the population that abides the law to buy cold medicine, fuel, fertilizer or whatever goes in that crap.

[Hit and Miss kid]

Try BASS-PRO-SHOP every time Ive went they had it....

[Patrick McNallen]

I don't think that mixing diesel and pump gas will get you anything like camp fuel. You will lower the octane, but octane only matters if you don't have enough. An exception to that might be found in a hot tube engine, but hot tube engines will run fine on 100+ octane propane if you get the tube hot enough. I have never encountered an antique engine that did not run better on camp fuel than on today's adulterated pump gas. As for the meth-heads, lock them up and give them all the meth they want. They'll probably live longer in prison doing clean meth than they will out on the street, and Lord knows they won't eat much...

[slug]

I have always used pump gas. What kind of mixture do you want. I have aways wonderd. What about Kerosene? I would like more info. Dad said that the low octane unleaded is kinda like what they had way back when. I have never experameted with mixing. He also said two cycle oil mix. Always worked good with starting gas.

John

[Bill Geyer]

Naphtha can be bought where they sell paint. I have seen it at Tractor Supply and hardware stores in the paint department. It is used to modify the drying/curing properties of paint.

[Neale Behm]

Two other reasons I can see for using Naptha/Camp Fuel/White Gas:
1) The exhaust odor is not as offensive as from pump gas.
2) The left-over fuel won't go stale in a few weeks like pump gas.
I looked into buying 5 gallon cans of naptha at a Body Shop supply house and it was a lot more expensive than Camp Fuel at Wallyworld. I mentioned this to a buddy who worked for Sherwin Williams. His explanation was that buying in bulk makes it an "industrial" product which makes it liable for all the EPA documentation and reg compliance nonsense (spelled $$$$). Buying in a gallon can is a consumer commodity which bypasses a lot of the redtape.
My research rates this explanation as "Plausible".

[KidDynamo]

I live in the big city and get my camp fuel at estate/garage sales and it is often just given away. Here in yuppietown, there are less and less folks around who know their way around a Coleman stove or lantern.

After I had 3 or 4 gallons of the stuff, I quit taking it home but now I might start collecting it again. I 'spose I could put up a drum of the stuff- it seems to last about forever. I'm using some that I know is over 30 years old.

Of course higher octane fuel doesn't really burn faster and overstress engine parts. It actually burns slower. Good trivia question, maybe.

[Jordan]

ii know this may be a weird question but is kerosene the same thing?

jordan

[Jordan]

http://www.canadiantire.ca/browse/pr...romSearch=true for us canadians 11.99 for 3.78 litres of coleman at canadian tire

jordan

[Elden DuRand]

Thanks for all the replies!

I'll try to answer all the questions and comments. If I miss one or two, it doesn't mean that your input isn't important, it's just that I fergot!

Last time I was in Wally World, they didn't have any brand of camp fuel. I tried a couple of camping supply stores and neither of them had it. They said they couldn't get it.

Tried paint stores. Some of them had it but were way too proud of it to let me have any at a halfway decent price.

I've never had a problem running any engine with naptha. The mixture may have to be changed a little but they run fine and the exhaust smells nice - reminds me of when I was a kid (in the Dark Ages) and we ran the mower on white gas.

Mixing Diesel with gasoline is a bust. It may lower the octane but there's some kind of problem with either vaporization or ignition of the mixture. I tried a 20% mix of Diesel in gasoline in my 570 cubic inch 4-banger American LaFrance once. It ran terrible and smelled awful.

Kerosene isn't anything like naptha. It's actually called Number 1 Fuel Oil. Our old engines will run on it but won't cold start on it. Also, a lot of engines will "slobber" if they aren't loaded. Slobbering is when liquid fuel comes out the exhaust. It's very messy.

I've been told that naptha is produced in large quantities at refineries but that it is fed back into the process and made into gasoline. I think the problem is that there's not enough demand for the refineries to make much of an effort to bleed some off.

Anyhoo - I ran the engine today on about 80% gasoline and it did okay. Since I've got a battery lawnmower and everything else is Diesel, I haven't sniffed gasoline lately. What I bought today doesn't smell anything like any gasoline I've ever bought!

Oh, well............

Take care - Elden
http://www.oldengine.org/members/durand/

[Jordan]

thanks for clarifying that for me elden.

jordan

[Ned L]

Good point KidDynamo made. The lower the octane, the faster the fuel will burn. The higher the octane the slower the fuel will burn. So if you are concerned about "stressing" your engine you should be using the highest octane fuel you can find.

[Patrick McNallen]

Re: "The lower the octane, the faster the fuel will burn. The higher the octane the slower the fuel will burn. So if you are concerned about "stressing" your engine you should be using the highest octane fuel you can find" // It's not that simple. The octane rating of a fuel is a measure of how it burns under the conditions in an engine's combustion chamber under a particular set of operating conditions. In the open air, both low and high octane fuel will burn at about the same rate, but inside an engine, under compression and heat, they will behave differently. In a low compression engine, or any throttle-governed engine operating at low power, either high or low octane fuel will behave about the same. When you open up the throttle and the compression pressure and and combustion pressure and combustion chamber heat go way up, low octane fuels can burn rapidly and erratically. Higher octane fuel will continue to burn evenly and predictably under these conditions. There is no advantage to using a higher octane fuel than your engine requires under the conditions it is operating under. There is no risk in using low octane fuel in an engine that runs on it at full power without knocking, pinging, detonating, etc.

[BWegher]

I can't imagine why anyone is worried about octane rating on low compression display engines.

Naptha is nothing more than clean, clarified gasoline. It's the same as petroleum benzin or ligroin. Those terms had very specific commercial names at one time when petroleum derivatives were less refined than today.
Paint thinner (or lacquer thinner) or camp fuel are very similar to naptha but slightly less volatile, mostly for safety reasons.